A chewy, crowd-pleasing treat.
Both reasons and raisins figure prominently in this explanation of why penguins never trouble with trousers.
Young readers may be initially skeptical about Cushman’s emphatic warnings that a penguin wearing pants would portend “Something Really Bad,” on the order of an asteroid striking Earth or, even worse, finding only raisins in cookies instead of chocolate chips. But after a feathered fashion maverick, hidden with fiendish cleverness in a cartoon crowd scene, is revealed, events actually prove the author right—about both eventualities—and audiences will noisily chime in with universal agreement to her summary rationale for steering clear of bottomwear: “Pants go boom-boom.” Before an explosive climax more comical than catastrophic, though, Cushman dishes up views of a toque-topped cookie baker pouring on the raisins, other penguins busily engaged in unlikely activities ranging from riding bikes to kicking a soccer ball and reading on the toilet and, in addition, a gallery of wisely trouser-free species including everything from emperors to gentoo and “genfour” penguins. Better yet, she offers both chocolate chips and raisins as options in her closing recipe for pants-shaped cookies.
A chewy, crowd-pleasing treat. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2026
ISBN: 9780063455979
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: July 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Hee haw.
The print version of a knee-slapping cumulative ditty.
In the song, Smith meets a donkey on the road. It is three-legged, and so a “wonky donkey” that, on further examination, has but one eye and so is a “winky wonky donkey” with a taste for country music and therefore a “honky-tonky winky wonky donkey,” and so on to a final characterization as a “spunky hanky-panky cranky stinky-dinky lanky honky-tonky winky wonky donkey.” A free musical recording (of this version, anyway—the author’s website hints at an adults-only version of the song) is available from the publisher and elsewhere online. Even though the book has no included soundtrack, the sly, high-spirited, eye patch–sporting donkey that grins, winks, farts, and clumps its way through the song on a prosthetic metal hoof in Cowley’s informal watercolors supplies comical visual flourishes for the silly wordplay. Look for ready guffaws from young audiences, whether read or sung, though those attuned to disability stereotypes may find themselves wincing instead or as well.
Hee haw. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: May 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-545-26124-1
Page Count: 26
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A light dose of natural history, with occasional “EWWW!” for flavor
Having surveyed worms, spiders, flies, and head lice, Gravel continues her Disgusting Critters series with a quick hop through toad fact and fancy.
The facts are briefly presented in a hand-lettered–style typeface frequently interrupted by visually emphatic interjections (“TOXIN,” “PREY,” “EWWW!”). These are, as usual, paired to simply drawn cartoons with comments and punch lines in dialogue balloons. After casting glances at the common South American ancestor of frogs and toads, and at such exotic species as the Emei mustache toad (“Hey ladies!”), Gravel focuses on the common toad, Bufo bufo. Using feminine pronouns throughout, she describes diet and egg-laying, defense mechanisms, “warts,” development from tadpole to adult, and of course how toads shed and eat their skins. Noting that global warming and habitat destruction have rendered some species endangered or extinct, she closes with a plea and, harking back to those South American origins, an image of an outsized toad, arm in arm with a dark-skinned lad (in a track suit), waving goodbye: “Hasta la vista!”
A light dose of natural history, with occasional “EWWW!” for flavor . (Informational picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: July 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-77049-667-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tundra Books
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2016
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